This might be the most rich people behaving badly book I have ever read. And I mean that as a compliment.
Rebecca has just married Preston Wexley, the younger son of an extremely wealthy family, and instead of disappearing into newlywed bliss, she finds herself aboard a mega yacht off the Amalfi Coast with her new husband’s entire deeply dysfunctional family.
Although, we are informed that rich people apparently don’t call them yachts. They call them boats. So: they’re on a boat.
And these people behave VERY, VERY badly.
They slap each other. They punch each other. They throw each other overboard. There are affairs, betrayals, grudges, power struggles and approximately 47 secrets that absolutely should have been discussed before everyone agreed to spend a week trapped together at sea.
There are also a LOT of characters. Early on, I actually made myself a little diagram to keep track of who was married, divorced, related and only tangentially connected to the Wexley family. This worked beautifully…until the secrets started coming out. I kept crossing things out and drawing new lines until my family tree was looking suspiciously more like a family circle.
So yes, taking a few notes on the characters might not be a terrible idea.
Once everyone is aboard, the whole thing has the energy of a particularly unhinged soap opera crossed with Succession. If you ever watched The Young and the Restless and thought, “This could use a mega yacht, Italian detectives and a murder,” I have excellent news for you.
I also appreciated having this one on Kindle because the Italian detectives use quite a few Italian curse words, and being able to immediately translate them added a delightful little bonus to my reading experience.
This is fast, dramatic, messy and tremendously entertaining. It knows exactly what kind of book it wants to be and fully commits to the chaos. If “rich people behaving badly” is one of your favorite thriller tropes—or you just love a deeply dysfunctional family with enough secrets to sink a boat—this is an easy recommendation.
Publication date: March 30, 2027
Publisher: William Morrow/HarperCollins
Thank you to NetGalley, William Morrow/HarperCollins, and Kristina Kamen for the advanced reading copy. All opinions are my own.
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